Objective: To investigate occurrences of hearing loss and hearing complaints among patients with head and neck tumors who underwent radiotherapy.
Design: Prospective case-control study.
Setting: Tertiary care hospital.
Participants: Two hundred eighty-two participants underwent evaluation, including 141 with head and neck tumors and 141 as an age-matched control group. The controls had never undergone oncological treatment that put their hearing at risk.
Main outcome measures: Results of audiological evaluation, including the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly questionnaire and pure-tone, speech, and immittance audiometry, and radiation dose received by the auditory system (based on the percentage of the external auditory canal included in the radiation field).
Results: We observed occurrences of hearing loss in 102 (72.3%) of the participants exposed to radiotherapy and 69 (48.9%) of the control group (P < .001). Hearing losses were mostly sensorineural and of mild degree, but those exposed to radiotherapy more frequently presented with severe and mixed-type hearing losses (P < .001). Of the participants exposed to radiotherapy, 19.1% had a severe handicap (P < .001).
Conclusion: Patients undergoing radiotherapy in the head and neck region have a higher incidence of hearing loss and more severe hearing handicap. Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01102621.